How to delete your LinkedIn account

LinkedIn is a social network designed for professionals. It connects employers and job seekers, and as a way for people to share industry insights with millions of LinkedIn members worldwide. Since it focuses on the professional rather than the personal, LinkedIn is distinct from competitors like Facebook and Twitter. However, it isn’t for everyone and some may want to delete their LinkedIn account.

There are users who join LinkedIn, only to change their mind later. If you belong to this category, or no longer want your professional information online, you can deactivate LinkedIn easily.

Maybe they thought it could be another source of scrolling through memes, but LinkedIn is just not that place.

The choice is yours. You can delete your LinkedIn account or even temporarily suspend it. The professional social platform offers you maximum flexibility as you ponder if you want your account gone for good or a short hiatus.

Here’s how you can close your LinkedIn account or ‘hibernate’ it temporarily.

Delete LinkedIn account with these simple steps

This is how you can close your LinkedIn profile:

1. The first step is to navigate to the LinkedIn website.
2. Next, you’ll have to log in with your user ID (usually the email address) and password.
3. Once you’re in, click the Me button at the top right corner of your profile page. To find it easily, just look for a place where your display picture appears.
4. Clicking on the Me button will trigger a drop-down menu. Select Settings & Privacy.
5. You will see a new page. Look for Account Preferences on the left side, and select Account management from the sub-menu.
6. Under this section, you will see the Close account option. Click the Change button next to this option.
7. You will now get a prompt to confirm that you want to close your account. You will also be asked the reason for it. Just click Next once you’ve made your decision.
8. As a security measure, LinkedIn will ask you to re-enter your password. Do it and click Close account.

Optional: Don’t feel like fully deleting your account yet? Choose Hibernate account instead of Close account option.

LinkedIn privacy and security concerns

A major reason why people want to close LinkedIn accounts is that the social media platform has become a favorite target of hackers during the past few years.

Here’s a timeline of security breaches LinkedIn faced:

• In 2012, Russian hackers got access to 6.5 million users’ passwords.
• In 2016, 167 million user accounts were compromised.
• LinkedIn was also subject to a class-action lawsuit over deceptive email practices i.e. spam.

What happens after you close your LinkedIn account?

It usually takes about seven days for LinkedIn to remove all your information hosted on its servers. Nevertheless, once you hit Close account, your contacts and profile information gets wiped.

Keep in mind that once this is done, your information is gone for good. In case you need to return to LinkedIn in the future, you will have to go through the whole process of making a new profile, adding contacts, and asking for endorsements, from scratch.

One more thing. There is a small chance that once those seven days have elapsed, you will still be able to see your LinkedIn profile on search engines like Google. This is normal – search engines update their information slower than websites. It will take a few weeks for your LinkedIn information to completely vanish from the internet. Patience is key.

You may have decided to close your LinkedIn account, but are you aware that just before you do so, the social platform allows you to store a copy of your data? This is pretty neat if you want to retain any information just in case.

So that’s it folks. Now you know how to delete a LinkedIn account.